"You're feeling all right?" Rosa asked.
"Tired. But I'm fine." Selena wondered if that meant she needed to drink some blood. Ugh.
They kept seeing people headed toward their cars near hers and thought they were the ones, though none of them had looked like beer-guzzling, pot-smoking, hamburger-eating car thieves.
There were families, a couple of young women, three older teens, more families, but nobody who approached her car. Maybe the thieves had figured her stolen car was too “hot” and left it at a crowded mall so no one would find it soon.
Then three males and two females in their late twenties headed in their direction. They set off a car alarm, walking too close to another vehicle and one of the men slammed his fist down on the car hood in irritation. Which made her think these were the right people. She had smelled that three males had been in her car, so maybe because the women were with them, they weren’t the right people after all. But she suspected they were, and they'd just picked up the two girls at the mall. Wouldn't they be surprised when they learned they weren't going to drive the car they had stolen anywhere, if these were the people who had done so.
Selena couldn't help glower at them. They were so busy cursing and laughing about stealing stuff from a couple of stores, one of the girls bringing out a necklace from her purse, the price tag still attached to it, another slipped a pair of earrings out of her pocket, still attached to the display card—they didn’t notice the hunters or vampire hosts hanging around the cars, texting people, trying to look unobtrusive. But to anyone who was observant, Selena thought she and the others looked like danger—for them.
Selena hadn't planned to extend her canines. So far, she had kept them sheathed the whole time, trying not to get angry.
She was moving closer to her car though. She didn't want them jumping into it and driving off and losing them.
They were almost to her car, three of the people splitting off to the right of it, the guy bringing out Selena’s car keys and the other girl heading to the driver's side. The hosts and hunters ran toward the thieves then, but Selena just vanished and reappeared in front of the would-be driver. "Hand over the keys." She held out her hand.
The guy's mouth gaped. He glanced up at the sun, which was spilling all over her car, nearby cars, and the parking lot in general, only a smattering of clouds blocking it for seconds as the clouds continued to move along.
"Do you want to see the fangs?" she asked. "Hand over the keys and take your trash out of my car."
"You…you're dead. You were supposed to be dead.”
The two girls with them started to back away, but Rosa and a couple of hosts stopped them. Even though they weren't usually in the business of dealing with human crime, if they had the opportunity present itself, they helped the police out.
Rosa was on her phone already, her sword out, the girls staying put.
"Hunters?" the man with her keys said, sounding just as shocked.
Rosa called in the theft of Selena's car and of the girls stealing at the mall.
"We didn't help steal the car," one of the girls said.
"No, we don't even know these guys," the other said.
Her brother was standing beside her, his sword out in case the driver had a weapon. His friends were on the other side of the car apprehending the other men.
"I don't look dead. Why do you think I should be dead? Because the car was abandoned, and I wasn’t anywhere in sight? Ohmigod, you saw the vampire attack me?" Selena couldn't believe her luck if that was the case.
"Uh, yeah. We saw the car first, and it was just sitting there with its headlights on and the engine running, keys in the ignition." Ripe for the taking.
"And?"
"We saw, uh, you, walking away from the car and some vampire suddenly—"
"Wait, wasn't there a wolf?"
"Uh, yeah," one of the other guys said. "A wolf was following you."
"And you didn't try to protect her?" her brother asked.
They didn't respond to that. Of course not. All they cared about was that the car was there, begging them to steal it.
"Then?" she prompted.
"A vampire appeared, and he grabbed you by the throat. What could we do? We were scared. We're only human. We can't deal with vampires."
"And you thought I was human and only thought to steal my car." She was afraid they would say they just took off in her car because they were afraid of the vampire coming after them and they hadn't seen what else had happened.
“Another vampire appeared. I mean, it was like a damn vampire convention,” the guy with her keys said.
“The one bit you and the other tossed him aside, then bit you and hit you and then the two vampires were glowering at each other like they were telepathically communicating to each other. What do we know?” the other man said.
The driver said, "When the one hit you, you fell to the pavement and we thought you were dead."
"So you thought you had inherited my car. You must have driven in a different vehicle. You didn’t have to steal the car. It would have gone to my family. What happened to the wolf?"
"He, uh, turned into a vampire and he picked up the sword you'd dropped on the ground—"
"Then you knew I was a huntress."
"Uh, yeah, and he stabbed the vampire twice—the one who had bitten you and struck you—before the ancient collapsed in a pile of ashes and clothes. And the other vampire—the one who the dead vampire had pushed aside—vanished before the wolf guy could take care of him. We quickly jumped into the car and took off."
So there had been three vampires, the one who had bitten her and the one who had followed her as a wolf and killed the other, and the one who had first bitten her and told her telepathically that he should have killed her. She suspected the wolf had wanted her to return to the club, and then out of nowhere, the rogue vampires had appeared, waiting for a lone huntress to make her appearance so the vampire could turn her. But the other had wanted her dead. Did the wolf know who the rogue vampires were?
"What did they look like? The ones who had bitten me?" she asked.
“Both of them had black hair and they were tall, about three inches taller than me," the driver said.
That made him about six feet tall.
Two police cars pulled up and her brother explained to the police about the two girls and the stuff they had heisted at the store. When a female officer searched them and their bags, they found other jewelry they'd stolen. They read them their rights and placed them in one of the patrol cars.
"What else did you see about the one who attacked me?" Selena asked.
"Nothing else. Just that they were tall. And they were vicious. I mean, we knew they were vampires—maybe even brothers."
Brothers.
"And you did nothing to help," Rosa said.
"She was done for," the driver said. "What could we do? She was a huntress and couldn't fight back. How could we have helped? Besides, the other vampire killed the one and the other vanished, so it was done."
"She wasn't dead. She had to stumble her way to the vampire club," Rosa said.
"The vampire could have taken her there," the driver said. "He shifted back into the wolf and waited for her to reach the club, and then go in. What were we supposed to do? What if we'd tried to do something for her and the wolf had attacked us? No way were we getting involved in that."